The Statement of Jonas Grumby ex-Skipper of the Minnow
by Dabbled-at-Euchre
Summary: Warning-NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. The Skipper's sanity is damaged.


Stranger, as you read this, I urge you to burn it without reading. Yet, illogically, I feel compelled to write that which you should not read. Perhaps my years at sea compel me to make one final log entry. Perhaps I feel the need to explain to a stranger the knowledge I am sparing my friends.

I write this statement a man shocked out of his innocence. And I thought myself no young maid, or even young man, ignorant of the ways of the world. I had aged a half century and thought myself a survivor of the real world. My first year in the navy we did boat training one calm night and we accidently got an ugly glimpse of the unspeakable rites of the now dead Kanakay tribe. Dead because their neighbors on other islands wiped out those foul, inbred people for their trafficking with devils.

During the recent world war, I had three ships sunk from under me in this ocean. I saw all kinds of horrors man inflicted on his fellow man and one night when I was on a small vessel that had fallen in with another small vessel, we realized their identity before they realized ours and I seized hold of a machine gun and did things to those Japanese sailors which haunted me for years afterwards. For in the war we sailors could usually imagine our actions as ships and planes against ships and planes, but we were at the distance of half a football field and we were men against men, and I saw the limbs and torsos I was aiming at in the pale moonlight.

Even after that war ended and the war in Korea, my skull was almost crushed by a depth charge that got loose. A young sailor, Gilligan, knocked me aside and saved my life.

But I see now I was as ignorant of the true horrors of this world as when I was a youth. Nay, more ignorant, for then at least I knew I was young. And I know now it would have been more merciful for Gilligan to let the depth charge strike me.

It started a few days ago. We had been shipwrecked four years upon a tropical island. Gilligan went to the lagoon to fish, then returned with three men and three women wearing dark robes.

()()()

Monday, September 23, 1968.

"Hey Skipper, everyone! Look who I found! People off a ship! We can fix their ship and they can get us rescued!"

The other castaways gathered around.

After introductions Ginger asked, "Are you going to be in a movie?"

The leader of the visitors, a middle-aged woman of average height and bad teeth named Celeste, inquired in a New England accent "Why would you think that?"

"Well, you're all in robes. You look as if central casting and wardrobe filled an order for a bunch of cultists." Then she hastily utilized diplomacy "Of course, our fashion sense is some years out of date."

(The visitors all being white may also have influenced Ginger. Hollywood casting before she was shipwrecked was not overly diverse.)

Mrs. Howell asked, "No offense, if you're wearing what's now fashionable, but it seems a dreary, uniform fashion with no opportunity for individual expression."

Their visitor responded, "Actually we're going to a costume party."

"A party? How exciting."

"It's a cultist themed party. Hence our fashion choices."

()()()

Back at the lagoon the Skipper and the Professor examined the beached schooner. It was a little larger than the Skipper's ship Minnow had been. It had two masts with a number of sails, but also an engine. There was a lot of water in the hold.

The Skipper asked, "Has it been leaking?"

"Too much" replied Celeste "that's why we had to make land here."

The Professor said, "We should be able to get this repaired in a day or two."

Celeste said, "Actually the party is tonight." She turned to her companions. "The weather is now calm. Lower the boat."

Several of them busied themselves lowering the boat from the schooner. "What should we take with?" One asked.

"Just the keg, the party food and the Necronomicon. Never leave it behind."

The motorboat had seats for nine. They loaded food, a keg, and a leather-bound book they seemed to be treating with reverence.

The Skipper asked, "So where's the party?"

"On that island just over there." She pointed.

"There's no island just over there."

"There is now. Just over the horizon."

The Skipper tried to puzzle that out.

The Professor said, "Those earthquakes we recently felt indicated tectonic plate activity lately. Perhaps a volcanic island was pushed up."

Celeste said, "Pass out the walking sticks?"

One of her comrades asked, "The what?"

"The staffs."

Long, thick staffs of wood were passed out till each visitor had one. They were almost as tall as an average man.

Celeste began making hand signals, then pointed a thumb in the Skipper's direction.

Gilligan watched the hand signals intently, then said "Oh, I've been at a lot of baseball games. You want him to sacrifice bunt."

The Skipper said "Now Gilligan why- "but then two men behind him bearhugged him. One held a handkerchief dosed with chloroform over his face. He tried to fight them off before lapsing into unconsciousness.

Celeste said, "Good guess about the sacrifice part."

The other castaways did try to rescue their Skipper but were beaten off by blows from the staffs. Celeste pulled an automatic pistol from her robes and fired a shot in the air then aimed at the castaways, who retreated.

The motor was started and the motorboat sailed away with the Skipper and all the cultists.

Celeste explained "Usually we sacrifice women and children. But he was the only threat among them. Now we can return later for more sacrifices if we need them."

A cultist asked, "Do we need more sacrifices when the old ones return, and the new age starts?"

"Best to be prepared."

()()()

Although you may think it hindsight, truth is I did think there was something off about our visitors. Something creepy. But I discarded the thought. It seemed an illogical prejudice against strangers who dressed different than me. Besides, they could get us rescued and I WANTED to believe.

Then I was drugged and captured.

A rainstorm awoke me that night. I was tied up and surrounded by perhaps 40 robed figures. They began to chant. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fthagn. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fthagn." Over and over again.

I tested my bonds and began to try to work the knots. I watched for escape opportunities, while knowing in my heart that my doom was probably fated. You may think me a braggart, but the truth is that I had learned to face death during the war years, and I stayed calm. But then I began to feel faint, and the hair rose on the back of my neck. For in the darkness surrounding the torchlit area I first smelled unnatural scents, then began to see distant outlines, of hideous winged shapes. A darker darkness, creeping, they circled the ritual very slowly, making not one circuit an hour. (I wonder how much more of an impression they would have made on me had I the eyes I had as a young recruit.)

Then four more robed figures crept into the circle. One began to chant with the others in an almost familiar voice. Soon I recognized Ginger Grant of Hollywood, one of my fellow castaways, chanting in a foreign accent that the cultists who'd visited us not recognize her voice.

Then the grand leader, a short man who had not been among the ones who'd visited our island, held up his hands for silence. Most lined up for a drink, as if chanting for hours built up a thirst. But under a tarp he drew hieroglyphics on a blackboard lit by torchlight and declared "As our brothers of ancient Egypt recorded, the timing of the days till the stars are right and R'ley rises from the sea and the time is now."

Soon they began to chant again. But not ten minutes later, the ground began shaking so much that even the chanting stopped.

When the shaking stopped, a robed figure strode under the tarp. A familiar voice complained "The math has been bothering me. This equation is unbalanced and your predictions are suspect." He erased the last few hieroglyphics and drew different ones. "Haven't any of you studied hieroglyphics in Grad school? The Rosetta Stone led to deciphering."

The grand leader said "I studied hieroglyphics at Miskatonic University. But who are you?"

The familiar one held out his hand as he would in an academic conference "Professor Roy Hinkley."

Meanwhile, Mary Ann from Kansas whispered "Skipper. Hold still" and cut my bonds with a small knife.

The cultist yelled "An outsider!" And rushed the Professor.

But another robed figure stood in his way. The cultist pushed the figure aside, only as he fell his legs shot out straight and tripped the cultist. Given the opportunity, Gilligan always does things in the worst way possible for someone else.

Again, the ground began to shake. The Professor yelled "This island is sinking back under the sea!" The shaking increased dramatically. I was afraid I'd fall over so I eased myself to the ground. Everyone else did the same thing or simply fell down.

After perhaps a minute of this that seemed much longer, the shaking stopped. But no one had any confidence in the ground beneath their feet. The cultists began to scatter in confusion. My four friends and I linked hands and ran off, the Professor leading.

We ran through a few streets of stone buildings who's builders used bizarre non-Euclidean angles. Then ran on rocky ground towards a beach.

At one point the Professor seemed lost. He yelled "Call out!"

A millionaire's voice began listing blue chip stocks. His wife began to sing the Vasser school song. We approached the voices and the schooner.

Traditional nautical procedure would be to push a beached vessel off the beach, then climb aboard. But when that island started shaking again, we all climbed aboard, with the unspoken plan being to launch when the ground was calm. Instead the island shook even worse then began to sink, leaving us before we left it. The Professor started the engine and I took the helm.

There was a compass at the helm. The Professor gave me the bearing he used to get here and I calculated its' reverse. The Professor said, "I didn't have time to patch many of the leaks before we went to rescue you. So, it's best you steer and the rest of us pump water out of the hold." I nodded, my first order as Captain of a vessel on an ocean in over four years.

We sailed that stormy night till I saw an island that had a familiar shape. I steered for it, feeling relieved to return to the exile of a castaway.

()()()

We were perhaps a mile out when, even in the dark rainstorm, I saw a great whale surface on our starboard beam. Alone on the deck, I felt reassured at the normality of this Pacific scene. Despite the summer in my youth that I had read Moby Dick three times, boring parts and all, daydreaming of a sailor's life at sea far from the Ohio farm country I was born in, I knew that whales did not attack humans except sometimes in self-defense.

Even when the whale nudged our vessel, I thought it was an accident, akin to two schoolchildren bumping each other in a crowded hallway.

It was only when the creature blew water through its' blowhole that I began to suspect the truth, for as some of the water showered me I thought I could feel a foulness and smell an odor I could not name from all my years at sea, but one with haunting hints of familiarity, as if it had lurked on the edge of the range of my nose on several occasions.

I saw a large glowing red eye and text from the faith of my Anglican father returned to me, unbidden and unwelcome.

"So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships: there is the leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein."

Then the leviathan that was like a whale but was not, circled us as a shark circles its' prey and I knew our doom was near at hand. The leviathan bumped us again, hard. I remember not what lie I yelled below, hoping to give my friends some last moments of peaceful ignorance, before the schooner sank and we would drown or worse.

I saw the dark shape effortlessly shoot ahead till it was off our starboard bow, then circle deliberately to ram us broadside as was the tactic in naval warfare during the days of the Athenians.

Yet, when our doom was certain a bolt of lightning appeared. In that terrible second I saw the leviathan, it's teeth not as a whale's, but as a shark's, its flipper disproportionately long and ending in an eight fingered claw. I wondered, shape or not, how I could ever have thought it a whale.

But the lightning struck the leviathan, who howled a most unnatural howl as it was electrified, then dove to the bottom as a sinking ship. One passing bump and it troubled us no more.

Of the schooner breaking up from hitting the reef of our lagoon and our swim ashore, my memory retains only fragments. It is said that I pulled Lovey Howell ashore, went back and did the same for her husband, but that I cannot verify.

Our seven soaked and exhausted bodies and a goodly amount of timber are all that arrived ashore of the schooner.

But the me that returned is not the innocent that left the day prior. All my memories of the life I have gone through are now violated by the knowledge of creatures lurking on the edge of my awareness. Even my long naval service and the months I was so proud of as the Skipper of my own ship. While that foul leviathan was sharing the Pacific.

Gilligan feels the wrongness inside me.

As a schoolchild tests a teacher, as a transferred sailor tests his superior, my little buddy began to louse up simple tasks. But I sense the kind motivation in his bosom, that I would discharge what haunts me in yelling at him and striking him with my Captain's hat. Yet for what I feel there can be no such easy release, no return to my blissful ignorance that I so recently lost forever. I calmly correct his errors and he looks at me in more fear. Not for himself, but for me.

I know I shall soon fall over the abyss into madness and I welcome the release it shall bring.

Here ends my statement.

()()()

The Skipper put the message in a bottle, carefully sealed it and threw it into the lagoon where the outgoing tide slowly claimed it.

()()()

"Hey Professor!" Gilligan yelled as they returned to the huts. "I broke the Skipper!"

Everyone ran out to see. "What happened?" Inquired the Professor.

"Oh, he threw a bottle and I said I wish I could throw like that. So, he encouraged me to try and I threw a rock and it didn't go far. So, he said 'Little Buddy, you were just off balance. Throw this rock.' So, I did. And I threw it with power, but it didn't go far because it hit a tree and bounced back against another tree and a coconut fell from it and hit his head."

"Skipper, how do you feel?"

"Like I have a headache." The Skipper replied.

"What's the last thing you remember before getting hit on the head?"

"We'd just chased that fake nature photographer. The one who tried to photograph the beach when the women were bathing. But he got to his boat and launched just ahead of us."

"Let's see that was… 26 days ago. Minus perhaps two hours."

"I've lost 26 days!"

The Professor shrugged. "Somehow, Skipper, once the bump on your head fades, I think you'll be all right."

A/N-The Skipper remembered Psalm 104: 25-6.

I moved the Kanakay tribe's extinction from the date of about 1838 (per The Shadow over Innsmouth) to the Skipper's earlier life for dramatic reasons.


End file.
